


Naked and Afraid: Dramione Edition

by sexyslytherin



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Naked and Afraid (TV)
Genre: Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Eventual Smut, F/M, Happy Ending, Romantic Comedy, Sharing a Bed, Wilderness Survival
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-31
Updated: 2021-02-11
Packaged: 2021-03-17 07:14:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29096349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sexyslytherin/pseuds/sexyslytherin
Summary: When Hermione makes the very un-Hermione decision to journey to an uninhabited Maldivian island for the new season of Naked and Afraid UK, the worst she's expecting is sunstroke, starvation, and sand in places it shouldn't be. But when her partner turns out to be none other than Draco Malfoy, her escape to the tropics becomes hell in paradise.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Draco Malfoy
Comments: 11
Kudos: 16





	1. Worse Than McLaggen

**DAY ONE – MORNING**

Hermione breathed deeply, filling her lungs with the salty spray of the Indian Ocean. All around her was blue: a sparkling, Neptunian blue, rippling in every direction for as far as the eye could see. Already, she could feel the oppressive heat; the early-morning sun beat down on the bare skin of her tank-topped shoulders, leaving them cracked and itchy, and her hair was frizzing with sweat. Two more hours of direct sun exposure and she’d be well on her way to developing an in situ malignant melanoma.

And she wasn’t even naked yet.

Accompanying Hermione were two muggle men—strangers, who she’d met at the airport near Malé. The man steering the catamaran was a local from one of the nearby Maldivian islands, Dhiddhoo. Or perhaps Mulhadhoo? Hermione’s head was crammed so full of primitive survival skills and ID cards for edible tropical flora that she honestly couldn’t remember. The younger man, she was sure, was named Ethan. Scratch that—Nathan. Yes, definitely Nathan.

At the moment, Nathan was standing precariously on one of the boat’s long wooden benches, one wave away from tumbling headfirst into the ocean. Even out of the water he looked half-drowned, completely overwhelmed by the heat and his twenty-kilo camera rig. His ginger hair was pasted against his forehead, and his pale, freckled skin looked red and flushed from the sun. He caught Hermione staring and shot her a cheeky grin.

“Almost there, ‘Mione. Give it fifteen minutes.”

She forced her mouth into a thin-lipped smile and turned back to the water. Up ahead, the green smudge of the island she’d call home was peeking over the horizon. Not for the first time, Hermione let her mind wander, racking her brain for why in Merlin’s name she agreed to do this. It was all Ginny’s fault. And also the War’s: _Crucio_ definitely couldn’t be good for one’s brain cells.

At first, it had all seemed so provocative, so silly; the new season of _Naked and Afraid UK_ had put out a casting call for survival experts—ex-Marine bros and wannabe bushpeople—who were willing to rough it naked in the wild to prove that niche skillsets have value in the right context. Hermione had mentioned the show to Ginny one morning as a laugh, over her nutritionally-balanced breakfast at their flat in Muggle London.

And Ginny, as Ginny often does, had fixated on an idea and wouldn’t for the life of her give it up.

“Gee, Hermione,” she’d said, pushing her Coco Pops around their milky grave at the bottom of her bowl, “You ever thought of applying?”

Hermione snorted. “Of course not, Gin. Don’t be absurd.”

Ginny crunched a singular Pop and chewed thoughtfully. “Seriously, think about it. You managed to outrun Death Eaters for eight months, while, I might add, keeping Harry and Ron alive. You’re basically a survival expert.” 

“Sure,” Hermione said shortly, "but we had magic. And a tent.”

“And Harry and Ron—”

“Harry and Ronald are really not as big of a chore as you’re making them out to be. And for the last time, I said I’d like to stop talking about him.”

Hermione was quickly losing her appetite. Few things were less appealing than your ex with a side of breakfast, and the fact that Ron Weasley had made the brilliant decision to dump her and shack up with Lavender Brown still made her want to vomit. She didn’t know what was worse: that Ron had chosen his simpering Hogwarts lapdog over her, or that she’d let herself get dumped by a boy with the sexual charisma of an earwax-flavoured Bertie Botts bean.

“I’m just saying,” Ginny continued, “if anyone can win, Hermione, my galleons are on you. Not to mention—” she giggled “you’ll have a sexy bush man to get all hot and bothered with.”

Hermione rolled her eyes, but couldn’t contain her chuckle. Leave it to Ginny to turn starving to death on an island into romantic first date material.

Unfortunately, the conversation didn’t end there. Ginny brought up _Naked and Afraid_ so often that Hermione was itching to cast her most powerful _Muffliato_.

“Get your bread, Hermione.”

“There isn’t a cash prize. I would literally be malnourished.”

“Who cares? Bush man, bush man!

“Ginny, leave it alone—“

“FIRE! Ooga Booga!”

Finally, Hermione had sent in her heavily-embellished application. Mostly to appease Ginny, but also because part of her was curious to see just how far her smarts could take her. There was something about surviving with no clothes, no magic, no nothing but her brain that felt like the ultimate test; a real, primal examination that no OWL or NEWT could give her. Passing meant life or death, and her survival came down to her wits versus Nature.

Now, on the back of a catamaran in the Indian Ocean, Hermione was starting to seriously regret her decision. She’d studied, hard, as always. Consulted all the relevant literature; made checklists and checked them; flown to Australia to visit her parents at their muggle hippie commune and forced them to teach her naked fire-starting skills. Hermione was confident that she had done as much, if not more, to prepare for this test than her usual level of absolute over-preparedness. There was only one unknown variable, one glaring blind spot that she couldn’t control or prepare for.

Who the fuck was her partner?

The _Naked and Afraid_ production team had gone out of their way to keep her partner’s identity as secret as humanly possible. The first thing they made her do after bringing her onto the show was sign an iron-clad NDA: no leaking her involvement to the press, no hunting down partners or production members before the episode, no doing anything that could jeopardize the anonymity of the participants in any way blah blah blah. She wanted to scream.

All the email correspondence she received from the producers gave nothing away, either. Everyone was BCCed, and she’d have loved to try her hand at hacking but, unfortunately, they just didn’t teach that sort of magic at Hogwarts. She had no choice but to get naked—literally, and also maybe metaphorically—with a man who, for all she knew, could very well be Cormac McLaggen.

“Please,” she pleaded at the approaching shoreline, “anyone but McLaggen.” 

From this distance, the island looked like a tropical paradise: green and lush, with a white sandy beach ribboning the perimeter. It was positioned some 50 meters to the left of an even larger, lusher island, reminding her somewhat of a child and its watchful parent. She could see the silhouette of a catamaran, bobbing gently near the shoreline, but it was still too far away for any real detail. She squinted—If only she could make out the people—but a sunray caught a wave and threw itself up at her face, blinding her.

“‘Mione,” called Nathan, “we’re five from shore. Time for the boat interview.”

Hermione cringed. What was it with men and butchering perfectly good names, anyway? She turned around, flashing the camera her best not-nervous-and-definitely-in-control kind of smile. “What should I say?” She asked.

“Anything you’d like as long as you stop with the face. It’s creepy?”

Hermione stopped smiling, and Nathan grinned.

“Don’t worry,” he said, pushing his sweaty bangs out of his eyes, “I’m just going to ask a couple of questions. Nice and easy. We just need some sound bites to, y’know, chop up in post and make you look like a terrorist.”

She gave him a quick “Haha.” Out of pity.

“Okay, so. You’re about to get naked and meet your partner for the first time. How’re you feeling?”

“Fine,” said Hermione. Of-bloody-course that would be his first question. She tried to make her tone a little more cheerful. “I can’t wait. I’m sure he’ll be swell.”

Nathan nodded, prompting her to say more.

“And the extra breeze will be… refreshing?”

“Uh-huh.” He gave her a wink. “Refreshing.”

She cursed herself for blushing.

“Alrighty,” Nathan continued, “Moving on. In your file it says you were given a Primitive Survival Rating of 5.3. Not bad, not great—just average. Care to comment?”

Oh, she’d comment alright.

Hermione willed herself to stay composed. One more mention of her abysmally average PSR and she would jump ship and swim her way back to jolly old England, sharks and human physiology be damned.

As per the _Naked and Afraid_ tradition of ruining Hermione’s life, all contestants were given a Primitive Survival Rating at the beginning of their twenty-one-day survival journey. Basically, a PSR was a professional assessment of how likely you were to shit the bed on a scale from one to ten, and according to the so-called “experts” at whatever clown college the production team sourced their numbers from, Hermione was pretty much destined to fail before she’d even had the chance to being.

Sure, she hadn’t expected anything crazy; even a 6 or 7 would have sufficed. But a 5.3? After all the work she’d put into embellishing her run from Voldemort and his men (“Extended eight-month portage! Completely off the grid! Almost didn’t make it out alive!”), was that really the best they could come up with? It was insulting.

“It is what it is,” she said, shrugging. “I’m confident in myself and my skills. You’ll just have to stick around and see what I’m capable of.”

“You can count on it,” Nathan said, winking again.

Maybe he had sand in his eye.

Before Hermione could fully ponder the implications of Nathan’s behaviour (evolutionarily adaptive or workplace sexual harassment?) their catamaran stopped some four metres from the shore. She turned, scanning quickly for her elusive partner, but apart from the man driving the adjacent boat and two more camera operators standing awkwardly on the beach, the island looked empty.

“Uh-uh,” said Nathan, “No peeking. Clothes off first, then swim to the shore. Oh, and maybe try to look hot while you’re doing it—I need some good B-roll.”

Okay, so definitely sexual harassment.

After a moment’s hesitation, Hermione reached down and started untying her shoelaces. There was no point in prolonging the inevitable. It would be best to get this over with, fast, like a band-aid. At the end of the day, she reasoned, skin was skin, and it wouldn’t matter how she looked once she actually got down to surviving. Anyway, it wasn’t like she was ugly.

Hermione shimmied out of her shorts, then made sure to turn away from Nathan while removing her top and underclothes. She knew he’d probably see literally every nook and cranny on her body by the time the twenty-one days were done, but she’d be dammed if he was getting any sort of a show.

Once she was completely undressed, she leaned over the edge of the boat to scope out the water. It was shallow and clear, likely warm, and any sharks or other undesirable reef creatures probably wouldn’t venture past the edge of the surrounding coral. Still, Hermione felt her stomach lurch. This was it: the final plunge. Once she entered that water there’d be no going back; unless she starved to death or tapped out, but she’d have plenty of time to consider those possibilities later.

Hermione jumped. The water came rushing to meet her, warm and tongue-numbingly salty, as suspected. She took a moment to catch her breath, and then started swimming toward the shore with the dodgiest, most uncoordinated head-up front crawl she could muster. The faint ring of Nathan’s laugh echoed through the water. This was going to make for some incredibly unsexy B-roll, but it wasn’t her fault Hogwarts taught flying instead of swimming lessons.

A few painstakingly long minutes later, Hermione finally reached the beach, panting. Every step she took along the shore stirred up the fine sand beneath her, which clung in crusty patches to her wet feet and calves. The physical aspects of survival were going to take some getting used to. And the no-magic part: she could really do with a quick _Tergeo_ right about now.

From her new position, the island seemed like much less of a tropical paradise. The forest encroached pretty far onto the beach, which consisted of only a narrow strip of loose white sand, and the trees, which had looked so lush from the water, were suspiciously barren up close. Where were the coconuts, the papayas? From a survival perspective, things weren’t looking too hot. And for Merlin’s sake, where was her partner?

“Hermione, isn’t it?” A woman’s voice rang out to the left of her.

Hermione followed the voice back to its owner, a tanned girl with smiling eyes. Her hair was cropped into a shiny, shoulder-length black bob, which swayed back and forth as she picked her way toward Hermione, careful not to drop her armful of camera equipment. Accompanying her was a man who looked around the same age as the bobbed woman. If Hermione had to guess she’d say they were a little older than she was, maybe mid-to-late twenties. The man’s shaggy brown surfer hair flowed over his shoulders, nicely complementing his warm brown skin, and he had an intricate tattoo of a dragon encircling his right bicep. 

They both stood in front of her, smiling. The woman extended her hand first.

“I’m Monica, and this is Jason.” She pointed nodded her head at the guy, who also gave Hermione’s hand a jovial shake. “We’re part of the film crew.”

“Pleased to meet you,” said Hermione, and she really was pleased. They already seemed much more professional than Nathan. She’d almost forgotten she was naked.

“We’re just setting up for a few shots of your first partner meeting, but feel free to chat with him beforehand,” Monica said.

“The beauty of reality television,” Jason joked, “is that it’s rarely ever reality.”

Hermione gave him a nervous chuckle and resisted the urge to cross her arms over her chest. Jason was cute, but she’d just have to push through the awkwardness.

“So,” she said, glancing around again, “where do I find this mysterious partner of mine? He hasn’t tapped out already, has he?”

Monica rolled her eyes. “God, I wish he had,” she said, sharing a knowing look with Jason, who visibly cringed. “He’s a right tosser. Been bitching about the sun all morning. I honestly don’t know why he came.”

“Good luck, mate,” Jason said, “We don’t envy you. Last I saw he was hiding under a palm or something, you could try searching through the tree line.”

Before Hermione could decide whether to hunt down her missing partner or, more appetizingly, swim back to the boat and beg the driver to take back her back to London, she heard someone spit out her name, cold and condescending, behind her.

“Granger?”

She knew that voice.

Hermione whirled around and came face-to-face with a chest: a very pale, marble-smooth chest, disrupted only by a long, purple scar and a smattering of fine blond hairs. The chest connected to a neck, also pale, but flushing pink with the heat of the merciless Maldivian sun. And as Hermione’s eyes followed the length of the neck, up and up toward the face, she felt her blood run cold.

Looking down at her with hard, steely grey eyes was the last person Hermione had ever expected to see again, period. But least of all alone, on a tropical island, for a Muggle reality television show.

Hermione had been wrong. There was someone worse than McLaggen.

Standing in front of her, naked as the day he was born and looking very much like he’d just bitten into the world’s most ant-infested lemon, was Draco Lucius Malfoy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is my first fanfiction so I'd appreciate any and all feedback, including typos :)  
> Thanks for reading!


	2. Lobster-ish

**DAY ONE - AFTERNOON**

For one long, torturous minute, there was nothing.

Gone were the quiet rustles of dry palm leaves, the gentle slosh of water on the sandy shore. Gone were the sweet chirps of birds and insects, hiding from the midday heat in their shady, brambling bushes. The entire island soundscape had faded to black, and Hermione could hear nothing, see nothing, except the steady pounding of her heart in her ears and Malfoy’s stupid light grey eyes staring back at her.

She was having a panic attack. Yes, that must be it. She was having a panic attack, and for some reason—likely shock—she couldn’t force herself to tear her gaze away. There was something so disgustingly fascinating about seeing Malfoy, naked and pink, on an island nine thousand kilometres removed from pureblood Wizarding society. He looked so unusual, so undeniably out of place, that it was all Hermione could do not to open her mouth and gawk. She had expected a bad partner, sure. Most of the men on this show sucked. But never in a million years would she have considered Malfoy.

It was like biting into a cupcake and coming out with a cockroach.

Except, a traitorous voice whispered, Malfoy didn’t look like a cockroach. Not at all. In fact, an objective third-party observer might have even called him handsome. Hermione wouldn’t, or else she’d have to vomit, but he was definitely no longer the peaky, pinched boy she remembered from Hogwarts. She supposed that made sense. Appearances change, and the last time she’d seen him was over three years ago when she testified on his behalf at the Wizengamot. The Malfoy then had been a Caravaggio, all light and shadow, and thinned-out under the weight of public opinion.

And who could blame him? Nobody had looked their best after the War; Hermione was sure her hair had been a fright. But, logically-speaking, that must be the reason why the Malfoy directly in front of her seemed not entirely unattractive in comparison, even with the beginnings of a bad sunburn. So what if he had grown a few centimetres taller, and put on a chiselled but not too chiselled amount of lean muscle? So what if he now wore his white-blond hair draped over his forehead like a Titanic-esque Leo DiCaprio? He was still Malfoy. He was still annoying, and his burn made him look lobster-ish. 

Jason cleared his throat, and their minute was up.

“You two know each other?” Monica asked, looking back and forth between the both of them.

Malfoy flashed her an irritated look, and suddenly he was back to his normal, insufferable self. “Define ‘know’,” he drawled. “If you mean put up with her snotty, know-it-all behaviour at Hog’—”

“High school,” Hermione butt in.

“—then sure,” he finished, “we ‘know’ each other.”

Monica rolled her eyes. “Forget I asked.” She tugged her camera bag behind her into the shade of a palm tree and took a seat. After a moment, Jason joined her.

It was all too much, too fast, too hot for Hermione to process. The sun was making her dizzy, and she was in desperate need of a drink: she could already feel the dehydration headache pounding behind her eyelids. She took a couple of deep 4-7-8 breaths and willed herself to stay focused.

If this was going to be a petty schoolyard fight then she’d be damned if she didn’t give it her best shot. Maybe if she played her cards right, got Malfoy riled up enough, he’d decide to tap out and leave her and the film crew in peace. Maybe he’d even decide to take Nathan with him.

A witch could dream.

It was time for Hermione to initiate step one of her infallible three-pronged attack plan: good, old-fashioned mocking.

“Three years, Malfoy, and you’re still a prick. Nice to see that some things stay the same.” His eyes narrowed, and she faked a look of concern. “Fancy telling us what you’re doing here? Are you lost?”

Malfoy had the audacity to act miffed. “What I’m doing here?” he said, stretching out the ‘I’. “Last time I checked, Granger, I have just as much of a right to be here as you do.”

“No,” she said, her voice sugary sweet. “You really don’t.” She wanted to say that wizards who were pro-Muggle genocide didn’t just get to appear on Muggle television, but she settled for dissing his family instead. “What would Lucius say if he knew?”

_Yes, hit him with his daddy issues._

“My father is still on his extended vacation,” Malfoy said dryly, “He will not be hearing about this. I wouldn’t worry your bushy little head on his account.” 

“Then tell us why you’re here.” Enough. She’d never been good at mocking, anyway. It was time for step two: logic. “My working hypothesis is that you’re stalking me.”

“What?” He squinted at her like she was crazy.

“Are you stalking me, Malfoy?”

“Stalking you?” He laughed. “Why would I stalk you, of all people?”

Hermione drew herself up to her full, still rather short, height. She’d have crossed her arms over her chest for added effect if she wasn’t worried about pushing her boobs up. “I don’t know, Malfoy. You tell me. The null here is that you just so happen to be on this island for a show we both know you would never normally take part in. Excuse me for finding that more than a little suspicious.”

“Granger,” he said slowly, as if he was speaking to an infant, “have you considered the alternative hypothesis that I came here, of my own accord, simply because I wanted to?”

She scoffed. “What would you ever want to do on a survival challenge?”

“Gee, that’s a hard one,” Malfoy said, turning his head in an exaggerated looking motion. “Whatever is there to do on a tropical island. Swim? Get a tan? Have beach sex?”

He looked her naked body up and down in time with his last comment, smirking. It took all of Hermione’s willpower to resist the urge to cover up. She refused to let him make her uncomfortable, the pervert.

“Yeah, right. You know that’s against the contract.”

“Hermione’s right. Sex is against the contract,” Jason chimed in helpfully from where he and Monica had been watching Hermione and Malfoy have at it.

“Thank you,” she said, feeling vindicated. “And it’s not like survival is sexy anyway. You’d be better of going to Ibiza. Ergo, you’re stalking me.”

She knew she was being annoying and childish, but that was entirely the point. The more she weasley— weaselled her way under Malfoy’s skin, the more likely he was to give up and go home. As he should. 

Malfoy ignored both of them and took a step closer, leaning in just enough for Hermione to feel the proximity of his naked skin, centimetres away from her own. She stared up at him defiantly. _Don’t look down_ , she chanted. _He’s like a cobra—you’ve got to maintain eye contact._ He moved in even closer toward her face, grey eyes glinting in the glare of the afternoon sun. She could feel his breath, warm and minty, on her cheeks, and against all her better judgement, her heart skipped a beat.

He smirked. “Don’t flatter yourself, Granger.”

Hermione was hot, and bothered, and almost out of options. Curse Malfoy for being such a stubborn opponent. It was time to implement tactic three, her fail-safe Hail Mary: tattle to the teacher. She broke eye contact and turned to Monica and Jason.

“I guarantee you whatever he put in his application is made up,” she spat. “He doesn’t have any sort of qualifications.”

“Now, now,” Malfoy said smugly, “that’s slanderous. You know better than anyone else I’m ex-military.”

“You’re what?” She screeched.

“We fought in the same war, Granger. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten.”

“You were a Death Eater!”

“Is that a special operations unit?” Jason sounded confused.

“Yeah, man,” said Malfoy, “Check out my tat.”

Hermione closed her eyes and forced herself to count to ten. There was no point losing her head now when she had twenty and a half more days of survival left in front of her. What was that her mother used to say? Lose the battle, win the war? She wanted him off the island, and she wanted him off now, but she knew better than to push it too far. Tell Malfoy to leave and she’d as good as guarantee he stayed. If he was really as green as she suspected, however, then there was a good chance the elements would do most of the work for her. She tried to imagine Malfoy starting a bow-drill fire, or building a hut, and snickered. Once he got bored of bumming it on the beach he’d be back to London, stat. Malfoys were nothing without their aristocratic comforts.

She opened her eyes and saw a here-to-unconsidered fourth option: a truce.

“Well,” she said, with all the forced calm she could muster. “This has been fun, but why don’t we put aside our differences and actually try to win? You know, let bygones be bygones, live and let live, _et cetera, et cetera_.”

He made that squinting face at her again, but before he could reply, Nathan appeared and was hollering at them from halfway down the shore.

Great. Now there were two of them. 

“C’mon you guys, get your lazy asses over here. I need help with the supplies and shit.”

“Oh, thank God.” Monica rose to her feet. “One more minute of your hate-flirting and I was going to suggest you both tap out.” She shook her head at both of them and started jogging over to where Nathan was sorting through the rest of the offloaded equipment. Hermione could swear she heard her mumble something that sounded an awful lot like “I’m not paid enough for this”.

She glanced at Malfoy and was glad to see he at least had the decency to look disgusted.

Jason stuck around, seeming torn. “Do you guys need a chaperone, or…?”

Hermione took this as her out. “Actually, I think I’ll head on with you if you don’t mind. I’d like to help.”

His face lit up, and together they walked over toward the big pile of stuff, studiously ignoring Malfoy’s “There goes Saint Granger, always dreaming of labour” comment.

After getting their camera rigs up and running, the film crew decided it was finally time for the first partner meeting. As Monica couldn’t seem to stress enough, this shot was a big, big deal. That meant there were some ground rules.

“Everybody, circle up—Draco, that means you too. This episode’s only going to be fun to watch if you play off your squabbling as survival-induced. No one cares about your weird, childhood vendettas, so keep it off-camera. You two don’t know each other.”

Malfoy opened his mouth to argue, saw Monica’s look, and shut it. 

“You’ll also be showing each other your survival items. We’ve placed them in burlap bags under that tree—” she pointed “—so once you’re done introducing yourselves you can go over there and pick them up. Hermione, yours is on the right; Draco, the left.”

Now this was something Hermione was actually excited for. Each contestant on _Naked and Afraid_ was allowed one survival item to help get them through the twenty-one days. Her choice, a sensible, wood-handled hatchet, would undoubtedly come in handy. She hoped Malfoy had decided to bring something equally useful—perhaps a pot for boiling water, or fire starter—but knowing him that was very unlikely. Could he even do anything without magic or house elves? She supposed she was about to find out.

Five minutes of frantic rearranging later, her and Malfoy were positioned at opposite ends of the beach with strict instructions to not look at one another until the cameras started rolling. The plan was to get a shot of them walking out of the water and toward each other, part of Monica’s master plan to make it seem like they had both just arrived on the island. Hermione was more than a little nervous. She had signed up to survive, not to act, and all this pretending and prolonged sun exposure was making her queasy.

Finally, the crew was ready to begin. Jason gave a quick “3-2-1 action” and Hermione turned, a tad too fast, almost losing her balance in the ankle-level slosh of water. There, far away across the stretch of white sand, was Malfoy.

From this distance, she was able to get a good, long look at his naked body for the first time. Pink and peeling as he was, Hermione had to admit that he was far from unpleasant to look at. The combination of the sun shining through his pale blond hair and his toned, masculine physique made him look like a lion amidst the tropical landscape. The closer she moved toward him the more detailed he became, until she had a clear, uninterrupted view of his…

She was an adult. She could say it.

His penis.

Merlin, it had to be at least a good seven inches. She shook her head, disgusted. Of course Malfoy would have an obnoxiously large prick. It was probably a pre-requisite for being one.

Now a couple of metres away and still approaching, Hermione was suddenly very aware that she, too, was completely in the nude. She could see Malfoy’s eyes running their way down her body, peeling off the layers of gritty sand and seawater to expose her freckling skin underneath. She shivered despite the heat. It was too late to turn back so she forced herself to keep moving forward until they were standing an arm’s length apart. Malfoy seemed to be trying his best to look directly at her face, so she countered with the same. The air between them was charged with electricity. It almost felt like this really was their first time meeting.

Hermione finally broke the silence. “Hello,” she ventured.

“Hello.”

A pause.

Well, this was awkward. She tried again. “I’m Hermione Granger. And you are?”

His face staring down at her was unreadable. “Draco Malfoy.”

“Pleasure.”

Another pause. Since when was Malfoy so quiet? Not half an hour ago she would have let Voldemort eat her left pinky toe if it meant getting him to shut his mouth. Perhaps he was also nervous, but that wasn’t her problem. They had a show to put on. It seemed like everything was left up to her to figure out, as per usual.

“So,” she said, glancing at the burlap bags under the tree, “fancy seeing what survival items we’ve got to work with?”

He shrugged. “Sure. Let’s.”

The both of them turned and shuffled their way toward the tree that Monica had pointed out earlier. Hermione resisted the urge to roll her eyes. This was not going to make for riveting television.

“I can go first,” Hermione said, trying to sound cheery to make up for the fact that Malfoy was being so unforthcoming. She reached down to grab the burlap sack and pulled out her hatchet, testing the weight of it in her hand. It had just the right amount of heaviness, and her fingers fit perfectly around the hilt. The blade was even covered by a hard leather sheath to prevent any accidental cutting.

“What’s that?” Malfoy said, perking up for the first time since the shoot began.

Right. He’s probably never seen one before.

“It’s a hatchet,” she said, “it’s like a small axe.”

He looked confused.

“It’ll be good for cutting down palm fronds and vines for shelter. Also wood for a fire and a bow drill and stuff.”

“Bow drill?”

Merlin, this was painful. He really did know nothing. “It’s a fire-starting method,” she said, desperate to change the topic before Malfoy could ask any more potentially incriminating questions. She proposed one of her own. “What’s in your bag?”

“I’m glad you asked,” he said, regaining some of his confident swagger. He reached into his sack and came up with what looked like the top part of a shovel.

Hermione was flabbergasted. “It’s a shovel blade.”

“No, not just the blade. The whole shovel. See?” Looking very pleased with himself he pulled at the handle, and the metal shaft of the shovel sprang out. “Extendable.”

Hermione snorted, glad things were back to normal. Sparkly, shy Malfoy was uncharted territory, but stupid Malfoy? This she knew how to handle.

“What are you going to do with a shovel,” she asked smugly. “Dig for treasure?”

“Sod off, Granger. It’s cool, okay.”

She tried and failed to hold in her giggle at the sight of him waving around his dinky extendable shovel. “Who told you that?”

“The man at the store.” He looked sheepish, almost as if embarrassment was an emotion he was capable of.

Hermione giggled louder.

“He—you know what, never mind,” he said, annoyed. “The map. Pull out the map.”

Ah yes, the map. In addition to their two survival items—or Hermione’s survival item, and Malfoy’s severe misjudgment of Muggle culture—they were also given a rudimentary map of their survival location. Reaching into her bag, she unfurled the map and tried to smooth it out on the tree trunk so Malfoy could see over her shoulder. There were two roughly sketched islands, the small one she supposed they were on, and the larger one she could see over the ocean to their right. For some reason, the large X that marked their extraction point was even further beyond the bigger island, smack in the middle of the ocean.

That couldn’t be right.

“Malfoy,” she said slowly, turning around to get his opinion, but he was paying her and the map no attention. He was crouched behind one of the nearby bushes, trying and failing to de-extend his shovel.

Hermione moved her head to look at the crew, and her worst suspicions were confirmed the moment she saw Nathan and Monica grinning from behind their cameras. Jason was the only one who looked even a little apologetic.

He cleared his throat. “You’ve probably figured it out by now… I mean, you’re smart. The island we’re currently on doesn’t have enough resources for you to survive the entire challenge. If you two want to make it, you’ve got to get yourselves to the bigger one.”

Malfoy stopped smacking his shovel and stood up, realization dawning on his face. In between them and the large island was at least a kilometre and a half of shark-infested open ocean. He swallowed, and his Adam’s apple bobbed sharply in his throat.

“That’s right, babes,” smirked Nathan. “Time to swim for it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for all the hits, kudos, and super sweet comments on my last chapter! I'm so glad you guys liked it and would love to keep hearing your thoughts! 
> 
> Big thanks to 7_legged_octopus for reading it first.


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